Cohabitation and Marital Dissolution: A Comment on Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019)

Abstract

ObjectiveOur goal is to comment on a recently published paper (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019. Journal of Marriage and Family, 81, 42‐58) and provide an alternative analysis of the association between premarital cohabitation and marital instability.BackgroundTheir findings run counter to recently published papers on this topic. Although their article offers a potential explanation for this finding, the models include multiple and potentially confounding measures of time creating questions about their conclusions.MethodOur comment is based on approaches used in prior studies of cohabitation and marital instability using the same data source. Reviews of measures of time and data limitations are included along with new event history analyses focusing on marriage cohorts.ResultsTheir models arguably include too many indicators of time. Unlike the study by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) and consistent with other recent studies, we find that cohabitation has a weaker association with dissolution among recently married couples and cohabitation with a spouse prior to marriage is not associated with marital instability for recent marriage cohorts. This finding holds even when accounting for variation by marital duration.ConclusionThis comment provides insights into the use of the National Survey of Family Growth data ( https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg/index.htm data) and measurement of time. Our results provide evidence that counters the conclusion by Rosenfeld and Roesler (2019) that scholars have been “misled” about the role of cohabitation and marital dissolution.

The growth of education differentials in marital dissolution in the United States

“…To be captured in later cycles of the NSFG, those who married in earlier cohorts had to have married at younger ages, which is a risk factor for dissolution. These restrictions have been questioned with regard to their implications on generalizability (see Manning, Smock, and Kuperberg 2021 ; Rosenfeld and Roesler 2021 ). However, I find that these restrictions still leave 75% of the eligible sample and that results were substantively similar without restrictions, so I continue with the restricted sample as this bias is not evenly distributed across my sample; the less educated are more likely to marry at younger ages.…”

Stability and change in predictors of marital dissolution in the US 1950–2017

“…A decline across marriage cohorts in the association between premarital cohabitation and the risk of marital dissolution would (if true) be consistent with the Converging Destinies hypothesis. For a review of the debate over premarital cohabitation and the risk of divorce, see Manning et al (2021) and Rosenfeld and Roesler (2021).…”

The Impacts of Postdivorce Cohabitation and Relationship Duration on the Early Marital Climate of Remarriages

“…As a result, many couples who elect to cohabit may end up "sliding" into marriages (Stanley et al, 2010). The empirical debate surrounding the relationship between cohabitation and marital climate is ongoing, with the work of one camp suggesting a weaker association between premarital cohabitation and marital stability and dissolution (Manning et al, 2021), and the work of other camps (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2021) showing that cohabiting is a reliable predictor of marital dissolution.…”